5  42 


Joseph  Conrad 

A  Brief  Chronicle 


§« 


Doubleday, 

Garden  City 


Page  &  Co. 

New  York 


Joseph  Conrad 
As  a  European  caricature  artist  sees  him 


Joseph  Conrad 

A  Brief  Chronicle 

JOSEPH  CONRAD,  rover  of  the  seven  seas,  has  never 
**  been  to  America.  The  first  voyage  of  his  sea-life 
took  him  to  the  West  Indies  in  1875  in  the  old  French 
sailing  ship,  Mont  Blanc.  The  last  projected  voyage,  in 
the  winter  of  '94,  was  to  carry  him  to  Canada,  but  the  S. 
S.  Adowa  (2,000  tons)  never  found  the  emigrants  to  fill 
her  cabins. 

For  years  Mr.  Conrad  has  wanted  to  come  to  this  coun- 
try. He  was  prevented  by  work,  by  ill  health,  finally  by 
the  war.  His  visit  now  is  at  the  first  break  possible  (after 
completing  his  new  novel,  "The  Rover").  He  needs  rest 
and  change,  and  for  his  holiday  he  selects  America,  per- 
haps because  Americans  first  gave  general  recognition  to 
his  work.  In  America,  of  all  countries,  he  has  had  from 
the  start  his  largest  audience.  More  than  six  books  and 
many  of  his  short  stories  were  published  first  in  this  coun- 
try, and  his  manuscripts  (the  majority  of  them,  according 
to  report)  are  held  here.  He  counts  here  many  close 
friends.  At  last  he  is  coming. 

There  is  no  secret  that  his  own  varied  adventures  were 
the  material  for  many  of  his  books.  Conrad  was  born 
on  December  6,  1857,  in  Ukraine,  one  of  the  southern 
provinces  of  old  Poland,  into  a  distinguished  Polish  family 
named  Korzeniowski.  He  was  christened  Teodor  Josef 
i 

2030299 


Konrad  Korzeniowski.  At  the  time  of  his  birth,  the  at- 
mosphere in  Poland  was  intense  with  oppressed  patriotism. 
It  was  the  era  of  Russian  oppression  at  its  worst. 

Just  before  the  ill-starred  uprising  against  Russia  in 
1863,  his  father,  who  had  been  deeply  implicated  in  the 
earlier  rebellion  of  1831,  was  banished  to  exile,  whither 
his  mother  followed  voluntarily  with  young  Conrad.  His 
first  recollection  of  his  mother  is  of  the  time  just  before 
their  banishment,  when  he  was  five  years  old.  They  were 
living  in  Warsaw,  where  they  had  moved  in  1861,  to  take 
their  place  as  leaders  in  the  coming  movement. 

Of  the  patriots  assembled  in  his  father's  house,  Conrad 
says :  "Among  them  I  remember  my  mother,  a  more  fam- 
iliar figure  than  the  others,  dressed  in  the  black  of  the 
national  mourning,  worn  in  defiance  of  ferocious  police 
regulations.  I  have  also  preserved  from  that  particular 
time  the  awe  of  her  mysterious  gravity,  which  was  indeed 
by  no  means  smileless.  For  I  remember  her  smiles,  too. 
Perhaps  for  me  she  could  always  find  a  smile.  She  was 
young  then,  certainly  not  thirty  yet.  She  died  four  years 
later  in  exile." 

After  a  year  in  exile,  his  mother  had  become  so  seri- 
ously ill  that  she  applied  to  St.  Petersburg  for  permission 
to  return  to  her  brother's  house  in  Poland,  in  the  hope  that 
the  change  to  the  southern  climate  would  save  her.  She 
took  the  boy  Conrad,  who  was  then  seven,  with  her. 
When  the  three  months'  leave  was  over,  her  health  was  not 
improved,  and  she  applied  for  an  extension  of  leave. 
Not  only  was  the  request  refused,  but  a  high  police  of- 
ficer was  detailed  to  see  that  she  left  on  the  day  appointed 
for  her  departure.  His  orders  were  to  convey  her  forc- 
ibly to  the  military  hospital  in  Kiev  if  she  pleaded  illness 
as  an  excuse  for  staying  in  Poland.  A  few  months  later, 
in  1865,  she  died. 

Conrad  remembers  her  death.  He  remembers  his 
father,  greatly  saddened  and  weakened  in  health,  giving 


him  his  first  training  in  the  French  and  English  classics, 
of  which  the  elder  was  an  eminent  Polish  translator.  He 
remembers  being  sent  back  to  his  uncle's  ("as  soon  as  my 
father  could  brace  himself  for  the  separation")  and  en- 
joying there  the  only  three  happy  years  of  his  childhood. 
Here  he  played  with  his  young  cousins  and  came  under 
the  influence  of  the  French  governess  who  had  taught 
him  to  speak  and  to  read  French  during  the  three  months 
of  his  previous  visit  with  his  mother. 

Then,  in  1868,  his  father  was  allowed  to  return  from 
exile  on  the  ground  that  he  was  too  ill  to  be  dangerous 
any  longer.  He  carried  off  the  young  Conrad  to  Cracow, 
the  old  Polish  capital,  seat  of  classical  learning  and  his- 
torical relics.  Here  the  boy  went  to  the  best  preparatory 
school,  the  gymnasium  of  St.  Anne,  as  a  day  student. 
Although  not  an  ordinary  boy,  he  was  very  popular,  due 
to  his  ability  to  spin  the  most  fascinating  yarns.  In  less 
than  a  year  and  a  half  his  father  was  dead.  The  vivid 
impression  of  these  last  eighteen  months  with  his  austere 
and  heart-broken  father  stands  fixed  in  Conrad's  memory. 
The  shadow  of  death  hovered  over  the  house  for  endless 
months,  and  the  high-strung  boy,  who  was  not  yet  twelve, 
awaited  the  inevitable  with  incredulous  terror.  "I  don't 
know  what  would  have  become  of  me  if  I  had  not  been  a 
reading  boy.  My  study  finished,  I  would  have  had  noth- 
ing to  do  but  sit  and  watch  the  awful  stillness  of  the  sick- 
room flow  out  through  the  closed  door  and  coldly  enfold 
my  scared  heart.  I  suppose  that  in  a  futile,  childish  way 
I  would  have  gone  crazy.  But  I  was  a  reading  boy  and 
there  were  many  books  lying  about.  .  .  ." 

He  had  begun  to  read  at  the  age  of  five,  and  by  the 
time  he  was  ten  had  read  widely  in  Victor  Hugo,  and  other 
French  writers  (in  French),  and  in  Polish  translation, 
Dickens,  Scott,  and  Thackeray,  history,  novels,  voyages. 
He  first  read  by  instinct,  by  an  inborn  love  of  books,  and 
later,  through  necessity,  as  the  consciousness  of  the  op- 

3 


pression  of  his  country  and  the  sadness  of  his  own  life 
began  to  stifle  him  with  its  atmosphere  of  hopelessness. 
He  had  passed  three  years  in  the  darkness  of  exile,  had 
witnessed  the  death  of  both  his  father  and  mother  (both 
victims  of  oppression),  and  he  knew  that  their  parents  be- 
fore them  had  suffered  equally  in  their  struggle  for  free- 
dom. 

Even  in  those  comparatively  happy  years  in  Ukraine, 
his  desire  of  freedom,  of  breathing  space,  had  expressed 
itself.  At  the  age  of  nine,  looking  at  the  map  of  Africa, 
he  had  put  his  finger  on  the  blank  space  which  at  that 
time  represented  the  mysterious,  unexplored  heart  of  the 
continent,  and  said: 

"When  I  grow  up,  I  shall  go  there." 

Over  twenty  years  later,  he  did,  to  Stanley  Falls.  In- 
deed, the  mysterious  heart  of  that  continent  may  stand  as 
the  romantic  symbol  of  Conrad's  life.  The  determination 
to  go  there  is  inevitably  associated  with  the  sea,  and  the 
fever  he  contracted  in  the  Congo  sent  him  back  to  the 
land,  to  lead  the  sedentary,  if  no  less  arduous,  life  of  the 
novelist. 

As  a  boy,  Conrad  loved  to  tell  stories.  He  told  them 
to  his  friends,  for  hours  at  a  time.  He  dreamed  them. 
The  faculty  of  convincing  tales,  fed  by  his  reading  and 
his  active  imagination,  seemed  to  be  born  in  him.  Always 
he  dreamed  of  going  to  sea.  His  stories  were  of  ships, 
and  the  sea,  and  far  away  countries — which  he  had  never 
seen.  But  he  kept  his  peace,  and  it  was  not  until  he  was 
fifteen  that  he  first  spoke  aloud  his  desire  to  go  to  sea. 
His  desire?  It  was  certainly  more  than  that.  It  was 
everything.  That  characteristic  inability  which  he  says 
has  never  allowed  him  to  turn  back  from  a  course  once 
decided  on,  had  already  guaranteed  the  reality  of  the 
event. 

Yet  it  was  not  a  trivial  thing.  "There  was  no  prece- 
dent," he  writes.  "I  verily  believe  mine  was  the  only 

4 


case  of  a  boy  of  my  nationality  and  antecedents  taking  a, 
so  to  speak,  standing  broad  jump  out  of  his  racial  sur- 
roundings and  associations."  Of  all  the  cities  of  Europe, 
none  was  so  remote  from  the  sea  and  its  associations  as 
Cracow,  and  Poland  itself,  with  no  maritime  connections, 
no  seaport,  was  an  agricultural  country  exclusively. 

Perhaps,  he  intimates,  the  whole  country  was  not  con- 
vulsed by  his  desire  to  go  to  sea.  "But  for  a  boy  between 
fifteen  and  sixteen,"  he  writes  in  recalling  the  difficulties 
of  that  time,  "sensitive  enough,  in  all  conscience,  the  com- 
motion of  his  little  world  seemed  a  very  considerable  thing 
indeed.  So  considerable  indeed,  that,  absurdly  enough, 
the  echoes  of  it  linger  to  this  day.  I  catch  myself  in  hours 
of  solitude  and  retrospect  meeting  arguments  and  charges 
made  by  voices  now  forever  still;  rinding  things  to  say 
that  an  assailed  boy  could  not  have  found,  simply  because 
of  the  mysteriousness  of  his  impulses  to  himself." 

His  uncle,  who  had  become  his  guardian,  journeyed  all 
the  way  from  Ukraine  to  Cracow  to  investigate  at  first 
hand  the  root  of  the  disturbance  which  had  made  itself 
felt  over  several  provinces.  But  there  was  no  question 
of  Conrad's  sincerity,  and  after  several  serious  talks  which 
sealed  forever  their  friendship,  the  uncle  decided  he  must 
not  have  the  boy  later  on  reproach  him  for  having  ruined 
his  life  by  an  unconditioned  opposition.  "Meantime,  take 
the  best  place  you  can  in  your  examinations,  and  we  shall 
see.  .  .  ." 

And  in  the  summer  of  1873,  on  the  Furca  Pass,  "with 
the  peaks  of  the  Bernes  Oberland  for  mute  and  solemn 
witnesses,"  it  happened.  The  term  over,  Conrad  and  his 
tutor,  a  young  student  at  Cracow  University,  who  had 
proved  his  devotion  to  the  boy  by  two  years  of  unremit- 
ting and  arduous  care,  were  sent  on  a  "jolly  holiday,"  a 
tramp  through  the  valley  of  the  Reuss,  along  the  Upper 
Danube  to  the  Falls  of  the  Rhine.  But  before  they  had 
journeyed  far,  one  of  the  trampers  received  a  well- 

5 


founded  conviction  that  the  other  had  been  entrusted  with 
the  malicious  mission  of  arguing  him  out  of  his  "romantic 
folly." 

"He  had  taken  his  mission  to  heart  so  well,"  Conrad 
remembers,  "that  I  began  to  feel  crushed  before  we 
reached  Zurich.  He  argued  in  railway  trains,  in  lake 
steamboats,  he  argued  away  for  me  the  obligatory  sun- 
rise on  the  Righi,  by  Jove ! 

"I  could  not  hate  him,  but  he  had  been  crushing  me 
slowly,  and  when  he  started  to  argue  on  the  top  of  the 
Furca  Pass  he  was  perhaps  nearer  to  success  than  either 
he  or  I  imagined.  I  listened  to  him  in  despairing  silence, 
feeling  that  ghostly,  unrealized,  and  desired  sea  of  my 
dreams  escape  from  my  unnerved  will. 

"We  sat  down  by  the  side  of  the  road  to  continue  the 
argument  begun  half  a  mile  before.  Without  the  power 
of  reply,  I  listened  with  my  eyes  fixed  obstinately  on  the 
ground.  A  stir  in  the  road  made  me  look  up  and  then 
I  saw  my  unforgettable  Englishman.  .  .  ." 

It  was  settled !  The  Englishman  was  comic.  He  was 
ridiculous.  He  had  on  knickers  and  short  socks  with  his 
calves  exposed  to  the  public  gaze  and  to  the  tonic  air  of 
high  altitudes,  dazzling  the  eye  of  the  beholder  by  the 
splendour  of  their  marble-like  condition  and  their  rich 
tone  of  young  ivory.  .  .  .  He  was  the  leader  of  a 
small  caravan.  .  .  . 

"His  glance,  his  smile,  the  unextinguishable  and  comic 
ardour  of  his  striving  forward  appearance  helped  me  to 
pull  myself  together. 

"The  argument  went  on.  What  reward  could  I  ex- 
pect from  such  a  life  at  the  end  of  my  years,  either  in 
ambition,  honour,  or  conscience  ?  An  unanswerable  ques- 
tion. But  I  felt  no  longer  crushed.  Then  our  eyes 
met.  .  .  . 

"'You    are    an    incorrigible,    hopeless    Don    Quixote. 
That's  what  you  are,'  said  my  tutor. 
6 


"There  was  no  more  question  of  that  mysterious  voca- 
tion between  us  or  anyone  else.  .  .  .  Eleven  years 
later,  month  for  month,  I  stood  on  Tower  Hill  on  the  steps 
of  St.  Katherine's  Dockhouse,  a  master  in  the  British 
Merchant  Service.  But  the  man  who  put  his  hand  on  my 
shoulder  on  the  top  of  Furca  Pass  was  no  longer  liv- 
ing. .  .  .**' 

CONRAD  AND  THE  SEA 
1874-1894 

"If  a  seaman,  then  an  English  seaman,"  Conrad  had  re- 
solved, though  he  didn't  know  a  word  of  English  at  the 
time.  French  he  knew  perfectly,  and  when  his  uncle 
was  able  to  make  negotiations  with  some  friends  in  Mar- 
seilles, to  keep  an  eye  on  the  young  man  and  give  him  a 
sort  of  introduction  to  the  ways  of  the  sea,  Conrad  wel- 
comed the  means  and  kept  his  own  counsel  about  the  end. 

The  very  first  day  he  ever  spent  on  salt  water  was  by 
invitation  in  a  big,  half-decked  pilot  boat,  cruising  under 
close  reefs  on  the  look-out,  in  misty  blowing  weather,  for 
the  sails  of  ships  and  the  smoke  of  steamers  rising  out  be- 
yond the  tall  Planier  lighthouse,  cutting  the  line  of  the 
wind-swept  horizon  with  a  white  perpendicular  stroke. 
"They  were  hospitable  souls,  these  sturdy  Provencal  sea- 
men," he  recalls  with  affection.  "Many  a  night  and  day 
I  spent  cruising  with  these  rough,  kindly  men  under  whose 
auspices  my  intimacy  with  the  sea  began,  dodging  under 
the  lee  of  Chateau  dTf  and  Monte  Cristo." 

On  the  last  turn  of  duty  he  made  with  these  pilots  (in 
December  of  1874),  he  first  laid  his  hand  against  the  side 
of  an  English  ship.  She  was  a  big,  high-class  cargo 
steamer  of  a  type  that  is  met  on  the  sea  no  more,  and  her 
name  was  James  WestolL 

As  he  drew  up  to  the  ship  in  the  dinghy  in  which  he  was 
pulling  bow,  he  heard  himself  addressed  for  the  first  time 

7 


in  English,  the  speech  of  his  secret  choice,  of  his  future, 
of  long  friendships,  and  deepest  affections.  The  address 
was  brief  and  unbeautiful.  It  was  growled  out  by  an 
immense,  bearded,  double-chinned  "porpoise"  on  the  deck 
above. 

"Look  out  there." 

Conrad  caught  the  line  tossed  down  to  him.  In  a  min- 
ute their  work  was  done,  the  pilot  had  swarmed  up  the 
rope  ladder,  and  when  he  put  his  hand  against  the  ship 
to  shove  off,  he  felt  her  already  throbbing  under  his  open 
palm !  The  head  of  the  James  Westoll  swung  a  little  to 
the  west.  Before  she  had  gone  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  she 
hoisted  her  flag  as  the  harbour  regulations  prescribe  for 
arriving  and  departing  ships.  .  .  . 

"I  saw  it  suddenly  flicker  and  stream  out  on  the  flag- 
staff. The  Red  Ensign !  In  the  pellucid  colourless  at- 
mosphere bathing  the  drab  and  gray  masses  of  that  south- 
ern land  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach.  ...  it  was 
the  only  spot  of  ardent  colour,  flame-like,  intense,  and 
presently  as  minute  as  the  tiny  red  spark  reflected  from  a 
great  fire  in  the  heart  of  a  globe  of  crystal.  The  Red 
Ensign — the  symbolic,  protecting  warm  bit  of  bunting 
flung  wide  upon  the  seas  and  destined  for  so  many  years 
to  be  the  only  roof  over  my  head." 

Three  years  later,  in  May  of  1878,  Conrad  first  set 
foot  on  English  soil,  at  Lowestoft.  He  could  not  speak  a 
word  of  English.  He  had  spent  the  better  part  of  three 
years  in  French  ships,  had  sailed  twice  to  the  West  Indies, 
and  had  found  adventure  in  Marseilles  sufficient  to  last  a 
more  easily  satisfied  youth  for  a  life-time.  But  he  would 
not  present  himself  to  the  British  Merchant  Service  "in 
an  altogether  green  state." 

A  local  boat-builder  at  Lowestoft  who  understood 
French  helped  him  to  pick  up  a  little  English.  The  region 
of  the  English  east  coast  was  his  training  ground.  For 
five  months  he  shipped  on  board  a  Lowestoft  coaster,  the 


Skimmer  of  the  Seas,  trading  between  that  port  and  New- 
castle. "My  teachers,"  Conrad  admits,  not  without  pride, 
"were  the  sailors  of  the  Norfolk  shore;  coast  men  with 
steady  eyes,  mighty  limbs,  and  gentle  voice ;  men  of  very 
few  words,  which,  at  least,  were  never  bare  of  meaning. 
Honest,  strong,  steady  men,  sobered  by  domestic  ties,  one 
and  all.  On  many  a  night  I  have  hauled  braces  under  the 
shadow  of  that  coast,  envying,  as  sailors  will,  the  people 
on  the  shore  sleeping  quietly  in  their  beds  within  sound 
of  the  sea." 

Then,  after  five  months  of  this  wearisome  training  (he 
had  already  been  three  years  at  sea),  he  deemed  himself 
fit  to  be  presented  to  the  British  Merchant  Service.  He 
learned  of  a  man  in  London  with  a  willingness  and  (which 
is  more)  an  ability  to  procure  ships  for  idle  sailors — after 
some  discreet  circumvention  of  an  Act  of  Parliament. 
Anxiously  conceived  and  laboriously  executed,  a  letter  was 
written,  Conrad's  first  composition  in  the  English  lan- 
guage. He  followed  it  to  London  in  a  few  days,  and  on 
a  hazy  day  in  early  September  in  the  year  1878*,  a  strange 
young  seaman  of  twenty  stepped  out  of  Liverpool  station 
onto  the  streets  of  London  for  the  first  time  in  his  life. 
"I  was  elated,"  he  says.  "I  was  pursuing  a  clear  aim.  I 
was  carrying  out  a  deliberate  plan  of  making  out  of  my- 
self, in  the  first  place,  a  seaman  worthy  of  jhe  service, 
good  enough  to  work  by  the  side  of  the  men  with  whom 
I  was  to  live;  and  in  the  second  place,  I  had  to  justify  my 
existence  to  myself,  to  redeem  a  tacit  moral  pledge. 

"From  that  point  of  view — Youth  and  a  straightfor- 
ward scheme  of  conduct — it  was  certainly  a  year  of  grace. 
All  the  help  I  had  to  get  in  touch  with  the  world  which  I 
was  invading  was  a  piece  of  paper  not  much  bigger  than 
the  palm  of  my  hand — in  which  I  held  it — torn  out  of  a 
larger  plan  of  London  for  the  greater  facility  of  reference. 
It  had  been  the  object  of  careful  study  for  some  days 
past.  The  fact  that  I  could  take  a  conveyance  at  the 

9 


station  never  occurred  to  my  mind,  no,  not  even  when  I 
got  out  into  the  street,  and  stood,  taking  my  anxious  bear- 
ings, in  the  midst,  so  to  speak,  of  twenty  thousand  han- 
soms. A  strange  absence  of  mind  or  an  unconscious  con- 
viction that  one  cannot  approach  an  important  moment  of 
one's  life  by  means  of  a  hired  carriage?" 

But  he  found  his  way,  simply  from  the  topography  of 
that  chart  (an  ability,  he  points  out,  which  later  stood 
him  in  good  stead  in  regions  of  intricate  navigation),  and 
became,  as  planned,  an  English  seaman.  His  ship  was  the 
crack  wool  clipper,  Duke  of  Sutherland,  bound  for  Aus- 
tralia, and  in  October,  1878,  he  sailed  in  her  as  able  sea- 
man before  the  mast.  Of  that  first  crew  of  eighteen  men, 
all  were  English  save  Conrad,  a  Norwegian,  two  Ameri- 
cans, and  a  St.  Kitts  Negro  called  James  Wait — a  name 
used  just  twenty  years  later  for  the  Negro  of  "The  Nigger 
of  the  Narcissus." 

It  was  nearly  three  years  before  he  was  back  in  London, 
after  encircling  the  globe.  On  the  return  voyage  he  was 
promoted  to  third  officer.  He  lost  no  time  in  presenting 
himself  to  the  Marine  Board  at  St.  Katherine's  Dock- 
house  for  examination  for  second  mate.  A  frightful  or- 
deal. The  examination  (an  oral  one  before  an  old  sea 
captain  who  seemed  to  have  lost  all  idea  of  time)  was 
endless.  Other  good  men  had  been  "plucked"  in  a  quarter 
of  the  time.  But  Conrad  wasn't  plucked.  He  emerged 
three  hours  later,  to  tread  over  the  atmosphere  surround- 
ing Tower  Hill,  the  proudest  moment  of  his  sea  life. 

Was  it  luck  or  some  mal-intending  demon  which  ar- 
ranged to  get  him  the  berth  for  Bangkok  on  the  seedy, 
super-annuated  Palestine  ("Judea.  London.  Doe  or 
Die.")  ?  At  any  rate,  it  was  luck  to  Conrad.  His  first 
voyage  as  Second  Mate.  An  altogether  memorable  af- 
fair. It  began  in  1881.  His  first  voyage  to  the  East  and 
his  skipper's  first  command.  The  ship,  about  400  tons, 
was  all  rust,  dust,  grime  aloft,  dirt  on  deck.  They  struck 
10 


the  famous  October  gale  of  1881.  They  sank,  nearly, 
twice,  before  they  finally  got  started,  they  caught  on  fire 
in  the  Indian  Ocean,  and  had  to  put  off  in  open 
boats.  .  .  . 

Did  they  get  to  Bangkok  ?  Well,  not  quite.  But  Java. 
It  sufficed,  especially  when  you  have  been  days  on  end  in 
an  open  boat,  your  head  bared  to  the  scorching  sun  and 
the  salt  lash  of  the  sea's  fury.  An  occasion  worthy  of  the 
story  that  enshrines  it — "Youth." 

There  were  to  be  three  more  eastern  voyages  in  the 
years  that  followed,  long  passages,  the  longest  an  inter- 
minable one  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  days,  a  bad  pas- 
sage. .  .  .  But  not  one  of  them  without  its  rich  return 
in  stories  told.  Conrad  was  Second  Officer  on  the  voyage 
around  the  Cape  which  makes  the  epic  story  of  "The 
Nigger  of  the  Narcissus" 

There  were  days,  almost  every  day,  when  death  was  a 
very  real  hazard,  hovering  like  a  hawk,  ready  to  strike  its 
unwary  prey  in  a  moment  of  relaxed  vigilance. 

"Sometimes  we  had  to  drop  everything,"  he  speaks  of 
a  particularly  bad  voyage  around  the  Cape,  "and  cling  with 
both  hands  to  the  swaying  spars,  holding  our  breath  in  fear 
of  a  terribly  heavy  roll.  And,  wallowing  as  if  she  meant 
to  turn  over  with  us,  the  bark,  her  decks  full  of  water, 
her  gear  flying  in  bights,  ran  at  some  ten  knots  an  hour. 
We  had  been  driven  far  south,  much  farther  than  we  had 
intended  to  go. 

"Suddenly,  up  there  in  the  slings  of  the  foreyard,  in 
the  midst  of  our  work,  I  felt  my  shoulder  gripped  with 
such  force  in  the  carpenter's  powerful  paw  that  I  posi- 
tively yelled  with  unexpected  pain.  The  man's  eyes  stared 
close  in  my  face,  and  he  shouted,  'Look,  sir !  Look ! 
What's  this?' 

"At  first  I  saw  nothing.  The  sea  was  one  empty  wil- 
derness of  black-and-white  hills.  Suddenly,  half-con- 
cealed in  the  tumult  of  the  foaming  rollers,  I  made  out 


\ 


awash,  something  enormous,  rising  and  falling — something 
spread  out  like  a  burst  of  foam,  but  with  a  more  bluish, 
more  solid  look. 

"It  was  a  piece  of  an  ice-floe.  .  .  .  floating  lower 
than  any  raft,  right  in  our  way,  as  if  ambushed  among 
the  waves  with  murderous  intent.  There  was  no  time  to 
get  down  on  deck.  I  shouted  from  aloft  until  my  head 
was  ready  to  split.  I  was  heard  aft,  and  we  managed  to 
clear  the  sunken  floe  which  had  come  all  the  way  from 
the  southern  ice-cap  to  have  a  try  at  our  unsuspecting  lives. 
Had  it  been  an  hour  later,  nothing  could  have  saved  the 
ship,  for  no  eye  could  have  made  out  in  the  dusk  that  pale 
piece  of  ice  swept  over  the  white-crested  waves.  .  .  . 

"I  am,  perhaps,  unduly  sensitive,"  he  remarks  of  this 
and  a  score  of  other  similar  affairs  in  the  routine  of  the 
sea,  "but  I  confess  that  the  idea  of  being  suddenly  spilled 
into  an  infuriated  ocean  in  the  midst  of  darkness  and  up- 
roar affected  me  always  with  a  sensation  of  shrinking 
distaste.  To  be  drowned  in  a  pond,  though  it  might  be 
called  an  ignominous  fate  by  the  ignorant,  is  yet  a  bright 
and  peaceful  ending  to  some  other  endings  to  one's  earthly 
career  which  I  have  mentally  quaked  at  in  the  intervals, 
or  even  in  the  midst,  of  violent  exertions." 

A  quaking  of  a  different  sort  affected  Conrad  on  his 
fourth  and  last  voyage  to  the  East,  in  1884.  The  run 
was  Amsterdam  to  Samarang  in  Java.  Conrad  was 
twenty-four,  and  elated.  He  was  First  Mate  for  the  first 
time,  in  a  good  ship,  the  Highland  Forest.  The  cargo, 
frozen  up  the  river,  finally  arrived,  and  shortly  after  he 
had  finished  what  seemed  a  very  careful  job  of  loading, 
his  captain  arrived,  and  the  ship  put  out  to  sea. 

But  ships,  like  men,  require  humouring,  and  the  young 
first  mate  could  not  know  the  particular  humours  of  the 
Highland  Forest.  He  had  loaded  her  to  makt  her  stable, 
and  he  got  her,  stable.  After  this  experience  he  had  a 
very  solid  respect  for  a  ship's  cargo,  for  he  says : 
12 


"Neither  before  nor  since  have  I  felt  a  ship  roll  so 
abruptly,  so  violently,  so  heavily.  Once  she  began,  you 
felt  that  she  would  never  stop,  and  this  hopeless  sensation 
characterizing  the  motion  of  ships  whose  centre  of  gravity 
is  brought  down  too  low  in  loading  made  everyone  on 
board  weary  of  keeping  on  his  feet.  I  remember  once 
hearing  one  of  the  hands  say:  'By  Heavens!  Jack!  I 
feel  as  if  I  don't  mind  how  soon  I  let  myself  go,  and  let 
the  blamed  hooker  knock  my  brains  out  if  she  likes.' 

"Down  south,  running  before  the  gales  of  high  latitudes, 
she  made  our  life  a  burden  to  us.  There  were  days  when 
nothing  would  keep  even  on  the  swing  tables.  She  rolled 
and  rolled  with  an  awful  dislodging  jerk  and  that  dizzily 
fast  sweep  of  her  masts  on  every  swing.  It  was  a  wonder 
that  the  men  aloft  were  not  flung  off  the  yards,  the  yards 
flung  off  the  masts,  the  masts  flung  overboard.  The  cap- 
tain in  his  arm-chair  holding  on  grimly  at  the  head  of  the 
table,  with  the  soup-tureen  rolling  on  one  side  of  the 
cabin,  and  the  steward  sprawling  on  the  other,  would  ob- 
serve, looking  at  me :  'There's  your  stable  loading.'  .  .  . 

"It  was  only  poetic  justice  that  the  chief  mate,  who  had 
made  a  mistake  about  the  distribution  of  his  ship's  cargo, 
an  excusable  mistake,  perhaps,  should  pay  the  penalty. 
A  piece  of  one  of  the  minor  spars  did  carry  away  and 
flew  against  his  back,  sending  him  sliding  on  his  face  for 
quite  a  considerable  distance  along  the  main-deck.  .  .  ." 

This  accident  was  serious  enough  to  cause  Conrad  to 
leave  the  ship  at  Java,  where  he  crossed  over  to  Singapore, 
and  was  in  the  hospital  for  many  weeks.  When  recovered 
he  took  a  berth  (there  was  no  reason  to  go  straight  home) 
as  chief  officer  in  the  Vidar,  a  steam  ship,  belonging  to 
some  rich  Arabs  in  the  Straits  Settlement.  Before  leav- 
ing London  for  the  voyage  in  the  HigMand  Forest,  he 
had  passed  for  his  master's  (captain's)  certificate  in 
1884,  the  year  of  his  naturalization,  at  the  age  of 
twenty-six.  But  a  certificate  does  not  mean  a  com- 

13 


mand,  and  he  was  glad  to  get  the  berth  as  chief  mate. 

The  East,  with  its  promise  and  its  mystery,  was  waiting 
for  him.  He  guided  the  Vidar  for  two  years  across  that 
"magic  circle"  of  the  Malay  Archipelago  and  the  Gulf  of 
Siam.  Here  he  met  Almayer,  and  his  special  bete  noir, 
the  unfortunate  Willems,  Captain  Tom  Lingard,  and 
Heyst.  For  six  of  his  novels  and  even  more  short  stories, 
his  mind  was  to  travel  back,  in  after  years,  to  this  core  of 
the  East.  The  Vidar  traded  on  the  coasts  of  Borneo  and 
Celebes  and  took  him  far  afield  to  the  Sulu  Sea.  Borneo 
was  a  savage  wilderness  inhabited  by  warring  tribes. 
Squalid  settlements,  high  on  stilts,  were  crowded  into  the 
water  by  the  surrounding  jungle.  A  trip  to  Jupiter  might 
have  been  more  awe-inspiring,  but  scarcely  more  fascinat- 
ing than  the  adventures  of  these  two  years. 

Then  suddenly,  without  warning,  he  chucked  his  job. 
He  was  through  with  the  Vidar,  and  as  it  turned  out,  with 
Malaysia.  He  informed  his  captain  he  wanted  to  leave; 
next  day  he  was  paid  off.  The  good  captain  was  dis- 
tressed no  end.  He  had  never  had  such  a  satisfactory 
first  mate.  But  Conrad's  mind  was  set.  There  was 
nothing  to  hold  him.  He  said  he  wanted  to  go  home. 
In  reality,  he  wanted  to  "get  on."  Certainly  he  was  from 
conviction,  perhaps,  disenchanted. 

And  by  the  merest  piece  of  luck,  before  he  had  even  un- 
packed his  luggage  in  the  hotel,  or  thought  of  making  ar- 
rangements for  the  voyage  home,  his  first  command  was 
presented  to  him.  He  was  dazed.  He  had  to  pinch  him- 
self to  realize  his  luck.  And  then  it  came  to  him — "A 
ship!  My  ship!  She  was  mine,  more  absolutely  mine 
for  possession  and  care  than  anything  in  the  world ;  an  ob- 
ject of  responsibility  and  devotion.  She  was  there  wait- 
ing for  me,  spell-bound,  unable  to  move,  to  live,  to  get 
out  into  the  world  (till  I  came),  like  an  enchanted  prin- 
cess. Her  call  had  come  to  me  as  if  from  the  clouds,  I 
had  never  suspected  her  existence.  I  didn't  know  how 

14 


she  looked.  I  had  barely  heard  her  name,  and  yet  we 
were  indissolubly  united  for  a  certain  portion  of  our  fu- 
ture, to  sink  or  swim  together."  He  was  twenty-seven. 

The  barque  Otago,  when  he  saw  her,  was  small  and 
trim,  resting  at  her  quay  among  the  line  of  heavy  ships, 
like  an  Arab  steed  in  a  row  of  cart  horses.  He  came  to 
love  her  well,  after  he  had  paced  her  paralyzed  form  for 
seventeen  sleepless  days  and  nights,  becalmed  in  the  Gulf 
of  Siam,  his  whole  crew  stricken  with  fever.  In  her  he 
crossed  the  shadow  line  of  youth. 

But  he  lived  to  make  some  brilliant  passages  in  the 
Otago  in  the  Indian  Ocean  from  1887  to  1889.  Finally, 
in  March  of  the  latter  year,  he  resigned  his  command  and 
went  home  to  London.  Perhaps  it  was  time  to  get  on. 
Certainly  it  was  time  for  a  holiday.  But  idleness  soon 
began  to  pall,  and  translated  itself  into  a  most  curious 
kind  of  activity. 

In  a  small  lodging  house  in  Bessborough  Gardens  about 
a  month  after  he  had  returned  home  (in  the  autumn  of 
'89),  he  sat  down  one  morning,  and  with  no  actually  ad- 
mitted or  conscious  design,  began  to  evoke  the  shades  of 
a  certain  Almayer  of  Malaya,  his  wife,  and  the  beautiful 
Nina.  Once  more  his  fate  was  sealed.  One  day  he 
would  leave  the  sea  and  the  ships  of  his  choice. 

"Till  I  began  to  write  that  novel,"  he  says,  "I  had 
written  nothing  but  letters,  and  not  very  many  of  these. 
I  had  never  made  a  note  of  a  fact,  of  an  impression,  or 
of  an  anecdote  in  my  life.  The  conception  of  a  planned 
book  was  entirely  outside  my  mental  range  when  I  sat 
down  to  write;  literary  ambition  had  never  entered  the 
world  of  my  imaginings. 

"But  for  many  years  Almayer  and  the  world  of  his 
story  had  been  the  companions  of  my  imagination,  with- 
out, I  hope,  impairing  my  ability  to  deal  with  the  realities 
of  sea  life.  I  had  had  the  man  and  his  surroundings 
with  me  ever  since  my  return  from  eastern  waters — 

15 


some  four  years  before  the  morning  I  began  to  write. 

"It  was  in  the  front  sitting  room  of  furnished  apart- 
ments in  a  Pimlico  square  that  they  first  began  to  live 
again  with  a  vividness  and  a  poignancy  quite  foreign  to 
our  former  real  intercourse.  They  did  not  clamour  aloud 
for  my  attention.  They  came  with  a  silent  and  irresist- 
ible appeal — and  the  appeal,  I  affirm  here,  was  not  to  my 
self-love  or  to  my  vanity.  It  seems  now  to  have  had  a 
moral  character,  for  why  should  the  memory  of  these  be- 
ings, seen  in  their  obscure,  sun-bathed  existence,  demand 
to  express  itself  in  the  shape  of  a  novel,  except  on  the 
ground  of  that  mysterious  fellowship  which  unites  in  a 
community  of  hopes  and  fears  all  the  dwellers  of  this 
earth?  .  .  .  After  all  these  years,  each  leaving  its 
evidence  of  slowly  blackened  pages,  I  can  honestly  say 
that  it  is  a  sentiment  akin  to  pity  which  prompted  me  to 
render  in  words  assembled  with  conscientious  care  the 
memory  of  things  forever  distant  and  of  men  who  had 
lived." 

But  the  book  so  begun  in  the  autumn  of  1889  had  to 
penetrate  the  heart  of  Africa  (in  fulfillment  of  the  early 
prophecy),  to  travel  the  high  seas  for  two  years  and  more, 
and  make  two  trips  across  the  European  continent  before 
its  yellowing  bulk  found  a  permanent  rest,  and  suitable 
reception  with  the  publishing  house  of  T.  Fisher  Unwin  in 
1894. 

Conrad's  African  experience  (much  of  it  is  faithfully 
presented  in  "Heart  of  Darkness,"  considered  by  many 
critics  to  be  Conrad's  masterpiece)  is  best  described  by 
the  word  "ghastly."  The  prophecy  of  his  boyhood  did 
not  take  into  account  the  fact  that  he  should  be  carried 
away  from  "there,"  deathly  ill  with  a  fever  which  gave 
him  good  cause  to  wish  himself  dead  many  times  over, 
from  the  effects  of  which  he  has  never  fully  recovered. 
"Almayer's  Folly"  went  with  him  to  Africa,  the  seven 
chapters  then  in  existence,  and  refused  to  be  lost  when 
16 


practically  all  the  rest  of  his  luggage  was  dumped  into  the 
Congo.  It  accompanied  him  to  Geneva,  and  in  the  con- 
valescence following  his  long  illness,  the  eighth  chapter 
was  completed.  This  was  in  1890,  when  he  later  made 
his  first  pilgrimage  back  to  Ukraine. 

The  manuscript  followed  him  to  sea  again  on  the  ship 
Torrens,  the  voyage  to  Australia  where  the  young  Cam- 
bridge student,  Jacques,  became  its  first  reader.  When 
asked  by  the  dubious  author  whether  it  was  worth  going 
on  with,  he  made  the  memorable  reply,  both  emphatic  and 
succinct :  "Distinctly."  On  this  ship,  the  Torrens,  Conrad 
later  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  John  Galsworthy  "for 
some  forty  days  in  the  Indian  Ocean." 

The  tenth  chapter  of  "Almayer's  Folly"  was  begun  in 
the  second  mate's  cabin  of  the  steamship  Adowa,  tied  up 
to  a  quay  in  Rouen  in  the  grip  of  the  wintry  weather. 
But  the  ship  which  was  bound  for  Canada  on  what  would 
have  been  Conrad's  first  voyage  to  America  never  left 
port.  The  emigrants  who  were  to  fill  her  cabins  never 
materialized. 

That  was  the  end  of  Conrad's  sea-going.  He  put  out 
for  Poland  (with  "Almayer's  Folly"  in  his  hand  bag)  on 
a  last  visit  to  his  uncle,  "Mr.  T.  B.,"  the  guardian  of  his 
youth,  and  the  well-beloved  friend  to  whom  the  book  was 
later  dedicated.  We  have  a  glimpse  of  the  still  incom- 
plete manuscript  being  lost  in  the  Berlin  railway  station, 
but  when  we  see  it  again,  it  is  between  covers,  and  in 
type,  issued  at  six  shillings,  about  $1.50 — where  all  may 
read.  But  that  was  in  '95.  The  price  of  the  same  edi- 
tion now,  unfortunately,  is  about  $70.00. 

CONRAD'S  WRITING  LIFE 

"Almayer's  Folly"  was  published  in  both  England  and 
America  in  1895.  There  was  no  sensation  at  the  time, 
though  no  longer  ago  than  yesterday  the  book  was  called 

17 


"a  work  of  absolute  genius."  In  1896,  Conrad  was  mar- 
ried and  went  to  live  in  Kent,  where  he  has  resided  in 
comparative  seclusion  ever  since.  He  has  two  sons, 
Borys,  who  enlisted  in  1914  at  the  age  of  sixteen  and 
served  in  France  throughout  the  war,  and  John,  who  is 
still  attending  "prep"  school.  His  wife,  Jessie  Conrad, 
recently  brought  out  "A  Handbook  of  Cookery  for  a 
Small  House,"  with  a  testimonial  preface  by  "a  modest 
but  grateful  Living  Example  of  her  practice." 

Conrad  is  not  a  great  traveler,  or  a  mixer  in  any  social 
or  literary  set.  For  one  reason  he  hasn't  time.  People 
go  to  see  him  at  his  home  not  far  from  Canterbury,  but 
many  more  go  than  should.  A  remark  that  throws  much 
light  on  his  character  and  simplicity  is  one  he  made  to  a 
friend  not  many  months  ago.  "I  am  worried,"  he  said. 
"I  haven't  much  time.  There  are  two  or  three  more  tales 
I  want  to  tell.  But  my  strength  is  weak  and  the  time 
short."  His  health  is  independable.  He  has  never  been 
able  to  shake  off  the  effects  of  the  African  fever,  and  he 
works  tirelessly,  at  great  strain. 

In  the  maturity  of  his  writing  life,  Conrad  has  never- 
theless continued  to  live  with  his  youth.  His  books  are 
his  youth  brought  to  life.  "It  seems  that  he  not  only 
had  a  memory,  but  also  that  he  knew  how  to  remem- 
ber," as  Conrad  himself  comments  on  the  unnamed 
author  of  the  delicate  and  almost  private  pages  of  "The 
Arrow  of  Gold." 

Almayer  with  his  famous  flock  of  geese,  the  only  geese 
on  the  Archipelago,  had  come  first.  Almayer  naturally 
suggested  Willems,  so  Willems,  "An  Outcast  of  the  Is- 
lands" came  second,  reluctant,  as  he  would,  vivid  enough, 
but  reticent,  stubborn.  In  the  intervals  between  the 
longer  work,  he  recalled  the  earliest  short  stories.  "Kar- 
ain,"  "The  Lagoon,"  bits  of  treasure  chipped  from  the 
glowing  ruby  of  the  East.  He  worked  almost  incessantly 
for  three  years,  retreading  the  mysterious  rivers,  the  se- 
18 


ductive,  terrifying  jungles  of  the  East.  It  is  not  curious 
that  their  brilliant  colouring,  superimposed  upon  the  drab 
canvas  of  the  unchanging  sea,  should  be  ready  cream  to  be 
skimmed  from  the  solid  depths  beneath.  Captain  Tom 
Lingard's  story,  the  belated  "Rescue,"  had  its  fast  com- 
mencement in  this  period,  only  to  be  set  aside  for  the 
growing  and  increasingly  irresistible  desire  to  pay  his  trib- 
ute to  the  ships  and  the  old  sea,  to  which  he  yet  felt 
drawn,  and  to  which,  not  without  heartburn,  could  he  bid 
the  last  farewell. 

He  gave  them  their  tribute  in  "The  Nigger  of  the 
Narcissus,"  his  epic  of  "the  ships,  the  seamen,  the  winds, 
and  the  great  sea,  the  moulders  of  my  youth,  the  com- 
panions of  the  best  years  of  my  life."  It  was  a  ship-load 
of  well-loved  men.  James  Wait  came  back  from  the  old 
Duke  of  Sutherland,  demanding  to  be  the  centre  of  the 
story.  Old  Singleton,  whom  he  had  known  many  years 
later  on  the  Torrens,  must  have  his  place.  They  were 
friends,  all,  who  made  the  unforgettable  passage  in  the 
Narcissus.  "Good-bye,  brothers!  Haven't  we,  together 
and  upon  the  immortal  sea,  wrung  out  a  meaning  from  our 
sinful  lives  ?  You  were  a  good  crowd.  As  good  a  crowd 
as  ever  fisted  with  wild  cries  the  beating  canvas  of  a  heavy 
foresail ;  or  tossing  aloft,  invisible  in  the  night,  gave  back 
yell  for  yell  to  a  westerly  gale."  Henceforth,  Conrad 
knew  he  had  to  be  a  writer.  He  had  done  with  the  sea. 

Lord  Jim  came — out  of  the  East — with  his  tale  of 
tragic  success.  Slowly  the  story  was  built.  The  ship 
Platna,  the  pivot  of  the  story,  was  on  everyone's  tongue  at 
one  time  in  the  Archipelago.  .  .  .  "Youth,"  his 
youth,  back  it  came  in  the  Palestine,  "the  old  rattletrap, 
the  test  of  life." 

Then  he  made  his  greatest  attempt,  and,  in  many  re- 
spects, his  greatest  achievement,  "Nostromo,"  a  canvas 
for  Olympian  painters.  For  twenty  months,  "neglecting 
the  common  joys  of  life  that  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  humblest 

19 


on  this  earth,"  he  worked.  .  .  .  And  here  is  the  con- 
tradiction— would  any  one  believe  Conrad  had  never  seen 
Costaguana,  the  Placid  Gulf,  Sulacco?  (The  scene  is 
the  west  coast  of  South  America.)  He  had  spent  a  few 
months  in  the  West  Indies  in  his  earliest  youth  at  sea, 
and  had  later  made  two  flying  visits  to  South  American 
ports,  visits  extending  perhaps  twelve  hours  in  all — and 
the  rest  he  got  from  the  descriptions  in  an  old  book  of  his 
childhood! 

It  seems  incredible  that  during  the  eight  years  between 
1895  and  1903,  when  Conrad  was  writing  the  stories  re- 
ferred to  above,  the  published  books  were  presented  to  an 
indifferent,  as  if  perfectly  unconscious,  public.  When 
one  launches  boulders  into  the  sea,  one  expects  a  ruffle 
of  some  sort.  Those  were  days,  one  may  well  imagine, 
of  patience  and  faith.  Not  entirely  without  their  very 
special  and  intimate  satisfactions.  But  a  writer  wants  to 
be  read,  and  it  was  not  until  as  late  as  1914  (that  is  dif- 
ficult to  believe  now),  with  the  publication  of  "Chance," 
that  the  public  rose,  as  one  has  seen  them  in  moving 
picture  houses,  to  express  their  praise  in  very  audible 
appreciation.  The  previous  volume  of  tales,  "  'Twixt  Land 
and  Sea"  had  met  a  most  respectable  reception,  but 
"Chance"  found  a  welcome,  which,  however  belated,  it  is 
even  to  this  day  pleasant  to  recall. 

After  "Chance"  there  was  no  more  question  about 
Conrad's  audience.  "Victory"  was  completed  during  the 
first  months  of  the  war,  and  published  in  1915.  The  de- 
cision by  the  critics  that  it  was  one  of  Conrad's  finest 
artistic  achievements  is  especially  interesting  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  he  went  back  for  its  setting  to  the  scene  of  his 
earliest  books,  Heyst's  "magic  circle"  of  the  Archipelago. 

The  story  of  "The  Shadow  Line,"  his  next  book,  had 
been  one  of  Conrad's  proudest  memories  for  years.  It 
was  the  harrowing  voyage  of  his  first  command,  be- 
calmed in  the  Gulf  of  Siam,  and  as  he  says,  it  was  not  a 
20 


UN  II  INI  UNI  II I  Ml  1 1  Ml 

A     000025925     9 

trifling  effort  of  memory  "for  a  youngster  of  sixty"  to 
catch  in  the  pages  of  the  book  the  freshness  and  simplicity 
of  youth.  In  "The  Arrow  of  Gold"  which  followed, 
the  effort  was  even  greater.  This  fragile  chapter  of  his 
youth  had  been  locked  in  his  heart  for  a  long  stretch  of 
forty  years  before  he  found  the  key  to  release  it. 

He  was  fast  paying  debts  that  had  never  left  his  mind 
while  other  special  goals  were  occupying  him.  The  last 
he  could  not  escape.  A  number  of  chapters  of  "The 
Rescue"  had  been  in  his  desk  since  1897,  never  completely 
forgotten  or  relinquished.  With  a  quarter  of  a  century's 
growth  intervening,  he  set  to  work  to  renew  his  old-time 
friendship  with  Captain  Tom  Lingard  and  Mrs.  Travers. 

In  the  process  of  "tidying  up,"  Conrad  published  "Notes 
on  Life  and  Letters"  in  1921,  a  volume  of  self -revelatory 
papers  on  books,  men,  and  personal  contacts  full  of  im- 
portant lights  for  the  student  of  Conrad.  It  is  his  only 
collection  of  essays,  and  the  chapter  on  "Poland  Revisited" 
is  an  unforgettable  episode  in  his  life. 

Conrad's  new  novel,  his  first  in  three  years,  will  have 
book  publication  in  the  fall  under  the  title  of  "The  Rover." 
The  story  concerns  Peyrol,  an  old  free  lance  of  the  sea, 
who  comes  home  to  his  native  France  to  become  involved 
for  the  greatest  adventure  of  his  life  in  the  Napoleonic 
naval  contest  with  England. 


21 


